Various systems and methods exist for receiving stowing inbound products and reporting any errors that may arise while receiving and stowing the inbound products. For example, as inbound products arrive at fulfillment centers, workers manually scan identifiers associated with the products, such as stocking keeping units (SKUs) and manually fill out reports for each inbound error, such as a barcode error, a waybill error, a vendor error, a shipment error, or the like. Then, the workers gather the inbound products with errors and deliver these products back to the vendors and/or suppliers for reshipment. While these conventional systems and methods may be effective in reporting inbound errors, there has yet to be an efficient method for receiving inbound products that efficiently schedules deliveries of inbound products based on a predetermined priority rule. In addition, there has yet to be an efficient method for monitoring inbound errors that assigns an inbound error barcode to the products with inbound errors that map to the inbound error such that a worker may determine information associated with the inbound error by scanning the inbound error barcode.
Errors that arise while receiving inbound products can significantly delay the shipment and delivery of products to customers. As one example, workers may make mistakes in calculating the quantity of inbound products and, as such, the physical quantity of a certain product may be different from the expected quantity of the product. Moreover, inbound errors may also arise at the vendors and/or suppliers. For example, the vendors and/or suppliers may make mistakes when sending inbound products to fulfillment centers. For example, vendors and/or suppliers may send less than an expected quantity of a certain product or vendors and/or suppliers may send the wrong products (e.g., products not specified in the waybill) to the fulfillment centers. Furthermore, delivery of inbound products may be scheduled in an organized manner. As such, there may be a simultaneous influx of inbound product deliveries in the morning and almost no inbound product delivery in the afternoon. If there are not enough workers to receive inbound product deliveries in the morning, this can significantly delay the shipment and delivery of products to customers. Since errors that arise while receiving deliveries of inbound products are inevitable, there is a need for improved systems and methods for receiving inbound products that schedules deliveries of inbound products intelligently and that reports inbound errors quickly and efficiently in order to reduce delays in shipment and delivery of products to customers.
In addition, conventional systems and methods for stowing inbound products stow products in fixed locations within a fulfillment center. For example, conventional systems and methods may be configured to designate different types of products to a predetermined location within the fulfillment center for stowing. Furthermore, based on certain restriction rules, conventional systems and methods may determine a location within the fulfillment center for stowing products. By way of example, based on the restrictions rules, all products with the same SKU may need to be placed in a fixed location within the fulfillment center, and all products with the same expiration date may need to be placed in another fixed location within the fulfillment center. While providing a fixed location for stowing each product may be helpful in organizing the inbound products within the fulfillment center, this may significantly delay the shipment and delivery of products to customers. Especially for large companies, fulfillment centers and warehouses may be extremely large, and thus, it may take increase the time it takes to stow each product in its fixed location within the fulfillment center.
Therefore, there is a need for improved systems and methods for stowing products. In particular, there is a need for improved systems and methods for stowing products that is capable of predicting a zone within the fulfillment center for stowing inbound products when an identifier is scanned. In addition, there is a need for improved systems and methods for stowing inbound product that predicts the zone for stowing based on one or more parameters associated with the scanned identifier.